


Falling Apart

by Tricksterburd



Series: Blue and Green Eyes [3]
Category: Steam Powered Giraffe
Genre: Angst, Blind Character, Father issues, blind
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-15
Updated: 2012-10-15
Packaged: 2017-11-16 08:16:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,598
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/537397
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tricksterburd/pseuds/Tricksterburd
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"That would be because they didn't make modifications.  Rabbit did."   "I-... No, sir, I did not."  The Jon nodded in agreement.  Though, for a more selfish reason.  Michael let the matter drop.  They were lucky to come home at all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Falling Apart

**Author's Note:**

> I do not own Steam Powered Giraffe. Written as part of The Great Feels War of 2012, and Eyes of Blue and Green. I HIGHLY suggest reading "The Third Time" before reading this. Much thanks to the Piratenpad folks!

Rabbit was never given the best of hearing.  He was, technically, a prototype.  The giant giraffe was easy, it didn't have to think for itself, didn't have to sing, didn't have to look human.  Rabbit, though, did.  He and the other robots that were intended for Delilah had to actually feel human enough to be charming.  He was trying to woo her after all.  
  
But Peter wasn't a doctor.  He wasn't a musician.  He had no idea what would be needed and not needed.  So he built The Rabbit to give him an idea of what would be required.    
  
And it was helpful!  The Rabbit was, actually, able to tell him what to improve on.  Only catch was that Pappy was so preoccupied with finishing the other robots he never actually got around to implementing the changes on The Rabbit himself.  So while The Rabbit could hear, most of his microphone pickup was internal, rather than external.  He heard those around him as though through a wall, or through water.  But he could hear them, most of the time.  If he tuned everything else out.    
  
"Rabbit" was a very fitting name.  In animals, when one eye is blue and the other is of some other color, typically the animal is deaf in the ear on the blue-eye side.  During the three day war in Africa, The Rabbit had taken a hard hit upside the left side of the head.  It had disconnected the wires in his head, and punctured the microphone that made up his audio receptor.    
  
As Pappy had never shifted his ears, and was much more concerned with finishing everyone else, The Rabbit never told him.  His father was busy, and had work to do.  So he let it go.  After all, Pappy would fix him eventually.  He was just preoccupied right now.  When Pappy had time, he'd fix The Rabbit, and then The Rabbit would tell him.    
  
Peter never did get around to fixing The Rabbit's ears.  He did a few changes to him, typically new ideas that he wanted to practice on before perfecting them and installing them in the other robots, but Peter was so busy talking and babbling about the changes he was making that The Rabbit never interrupted him.  By the time he was able to put a word in, Peter was ushering him out the door so he could work on The Spine or The Jon or HatchWorth.    
  
"Not now Rabbit, send in The Spine would you?  I perfected the vents for those smokestacks of his!  Let me know how those plating sensors work out hmm?"  
  
Somewhere along the line, Rabbit had lost his "The."  
  
It hurt, but he was a robot.  Pappy was human.  What did he, a metal man, understand of love and pain?  So he watched, and learned of pain and love and happiness from the man that had created him.  That's what fathers were for, after all.  
  
It was five years before anyone noticed that something was off.  Rabbit was rarely seen in his holding chambers with his brothers.  He had been glitching now and then, though it would reduce greatly once they found him powered off in a random room or hallway, typically standing against a wall.    
  
It was The Jon that actually thought something was wrong.    
  
"Rabbit?"  
  
It was midnight some late December.  Jon had actually yet to acquire a name, most just called him by his metal type or just whatever name struck their fancy for the length of the conversation.  Now and then he'd be called "Three" though that would get him confused with Peter the third.  Rabbit tended to avoid a name altogether.   
  
"Yeah?"   Rabbit kept his watch out the window, his face a mixed matched mess of boxy faceplate and war machine.  Peter was still designing a more human look for him and the others.  After the Weekend War he had given Rabbit his square jaw back, though it didn't fit quite right with the now smaller, rounded skull.  And pretty much left him to work on a mess of new and old robots.  Rabbit was, after all, only a prototype.    
  
"Are you okay?"  
  
"Shore shore!  Why'd'ya ask?"  
  
"You can't power into sleep mode, can you?"  Rabbit didn't answer.  So the younger golden robot stepped further into the room, pressing a bit more with his questions.  "It's okay if you can't, you know.  I have the dreams too."  
  
"I don't dream."  
  
"Because you don't sleep."    
  
Rabbit couldn't contest that.    
  
"I don't dream, 'acause I can't sleep."  
  
"Why not?"  Rabbit didn't answer.  "Is that why you glitch so much?  Because you don't power down?"  
  
"'Spose so."  
  
"Why don't you go into stasis then?  You know you'll wake up."  
  
""Stoo loud."  
  
"What's too loud?"   
  
Rabbit turned away from the window then, finally.  His glowing blue and green eyes (an experiment to find which matter worked best for running visuals and never switched out when it was found that neither blue nor green matter were needed to be able to see,) had an almost crazed exhaustion to them.    
  
"D'gears.  They're too loud."  The brass and gold robot crossed the room, sitting on the window seat by his oldest brother.  "Dey just tick and tick and tick and tock and tock and tock and are so loud!  An' it's all I hear, all da time."  
  
Rabbit's voice grew quieter and quieter until it was almost not there at all, his spidery hands coming up to clamp down on his ears.  It didn't help.    
  
Jon contemplated for a moment, watching the rain patter on the window.  In the pause he could hear, faintly, the hissing and ticking of Rabbit's pistons and gears.  And it gave him an idea.    
  
"You hear yourself."  Rabbit nodded.  "I can help."  Rabbit stared at him.  The younger robot just smiled, gently reaching up and taking Rabbit's head into his hands.  He lay against the window sill, dragging Rabbit with him and setting the oldest robot between his knees, resting his right ear, his good ear, against the gold plated chest.    
  
It took a few moments for Rabbit to realize what was going on.  When it hit him, he relaxed into a limp noodle atop Jon.    
  
"It's quiet."   
  
The void inside the golden chest swallowed all the sound that normally kept Rabbit from hearing anything else around him.  For the first time since he was built, Rabbit was able to choose to shut down into sleep mode, rather than glitching so bad his systems forced him into it.    
  
\--------------------------------  
  
There was something to be said for being almost one hundred twenty years old.  You get to see a lot of the world as it moves and changes.  You see fashions change from upright corsets and bustles and morning coats to loose shirts and pants and jackets.  You see the polyester of the 70’s change to the much more comfortable jeans and cotton.    
  
But probably the biggest change that you notice out of over a hundred consecutive years of existence would be the attitude towards automatonic life.  At first people were wary.  Talking robots weren't too uncommon around the Cavalcadium.  But robots that could not only speak and move, but **_think_** on their own?!  Unheard of!    
  
There were protesters, obviously, at first.  Peter handled them pretty well, all told.  They never really bothered anyone too much, and even The Jon (as of yet un-named until about WWI) didn't take much mind to them.  And then times changed.  The fear and anger over the robots slowly developed into awe, and copy-cat automatons started to pop up all over the world.    
  
And then everyone started to want a robot of their own.  Computers became a reality, changing from once self-moving robots into human controlled rooms, to hand held devices costing only a fraction of their original price.    
  
Out of all of these changes, what most noticeably changed were human attitudes to the robots themselves.    
  
First had been fear and anger. Then had been awe and wonder.  Soon they were a sideshow attraction, something to see and enjoy and brag about to your friends.  They became weapons, friends, weapons again, friends once more, experiments to win wars with, creations ripe for the taking and controlling.  But they were always robots.  While the world progressed, there was still some reservation in attitudes towards them.    
  
Spine felt it first.  He had, in 1955, been upgraded to feel human emotions further than any of the other Walter Robots could.  While they could all experience emotions (a running joke between the brothers was that they were programmed to "think" they could feel) Spine had been upgraded to not only _feel_ them, but have a _need_ to feel them.  
  
It became like a drug for him.  A strange itching need to fill the desire to feel as much as robotically and humanly possible.  So he started to date.  Humans, of course, being the only creatures he could do so with.  The need to copy, to BE human, was implanted in him.  He had never cared before.  He knew what humans were like, he knew emotions.  But never the need to BE like them, to mimic them so perfectly.  That had been put into him.  And so he started dating.    
  
Human girls, at first, were unresponsive.  It was cute, having a robot singer as your "bo."  But after the initial "Aww he's so sweet!"  it would become a bit awkward.  He watched them too closely, copied everything they did from how they cut their steak to how they picked up their glass of water. The hardest part was walking.    
  
His girlfriends never lasted long.    
  
That was, until society began to change once more.  When his changes first came about, in the fifties and sixties and seventies, while sex was becoming more and more open it was still not okay to be anything other than a man and a woman together.  That was changing now.  Men were seen dating other men in public.  Women were seen dating other women in public.  And, it seemed, robots were allowed their own day in the revolutionary sun.    
  
His girlfriends were still rather flighty; they would last longer than a few months, but never more than a year.  After a while, Spine didn't seem to mind it as much as he had before.  Unlike the girlfriends of the past who would pretend until it hurt, the girls of the 2000's actually _spoke_ to him about issues, brought attention to what was going wrong or right.    And there were always a few that wanted to go further, deeper, in their relationships with him.  He would always refuse.  Spine was, if nothing else, a perfect gentleman.  
  
The Jon was never really what you would call up to date.  While he had been upgraded, and was always far more advanced than his older and younger brothers and sisters, Jon was never mentally all there. People would call him childish, strange, stupid... His brothers just called him innocent.  This really wasn't true by any stretch of the imagination.   He had been in the wars.  He had seen just as much death and pain as Rabbit, Spine, and HatchWorth.  He had been through the agony of upgrades.  But through all of this, The Jon never felt the need to experiment with his emotions.  He knew what he was, how he was, and why he was.  He knew the joy of chasing a butterfly in the warm sun.   Of letting the cold rain wash the dirt off his brass and gold plating.    
  
Being sad never got him anywhere in their dark past.  So he wouldn't let him get him anywhere now.  He was perfectly content just being himself, and letting things happen rather than forcing them.  
  
Rabbit had a hard time understanding love.  He learned it from watching Peter the first.  Pappy had a twisted view of love after Delilah died.  He was protective of his robots, even if he was a bit reckless around them.   He took care of Iris and Two and Three, even though he tended to be a bit distant from them for long periods of time.  Rabbit had seem him dote, had seen him explode, had seen him break down.  Love, to Rabbit, was a mixed bag of whatever you could grab, and didn't make any real sense.    
  
His first "love" of course, was a toaster.  He thought it safe.  It wouldn't die like Delilah had, or make you angry like Iris would sometimes make Pappy angry.  A toaster couldn't talk back, it couldn't die, it couldn't leave you.  So he poured what he knew of "love" into the toaster.  
  
And then dropped her.  Because you have to hurt the ones you love to show them you love them.  After all, Pappy had sometimes insulted Iris until she cried, then he would hold her and make her feel better.  Pappy would leave Rabbit or Spine or Jon open and malfunctioning on the table because he was angry at WHY they were malfunctioning, and go work on another project.  He'd always come back, later, apologize and make them feel better.  Rabbit had always been a prototype, and while the others gained the perfected pieces, Pappy would tell him he was just a prototype and didn't need them, while giving him a hug and telling Rabbit how valuable he was to Peter.  It hurt, but Pappy loved him.  You have to hurt the ones you love, so they'll love you more.    
  
Spine had told him this wasn't how love was supposed to work.  And whenever Rabbit asked on stage "Do you remember the time I was in love?"  Spine answered honestly.  No, no he didn't, because Rabbit was never _really_ in love with that toaster.  Just like he was never _really_ in love with Pappy, or Pappy _really_ in love with him.  It took another girl that Rabbit referred to as "Honeybee" to teach Rabbit the lesson of "No, Jenny was not really your love."    
  
By the time Peter Walter's Steam Man Band turned into today's Steam Powered Giraffe, all of Walter's robots had come far in their lives.    
  
Far enough to have gained three new band members.  Sam, Steve, and Michael.  Michael, though, wasn't actually new.  The Reed family lived to take care of the Walter 'bots, so it wasn't much of a surprise when Michael (the "newest" Reed of the family) joined the band.    
  
\--------------------------------  
  
"Hey Jon."  The Jon glanced up from his position on the floor, where he was contentedly drawing on colored construction paper.  
  
"Oh hey Michael!"  
  
"So I was going over the new songs for your guy's second album.  I was thinking we should change it up some.  We got Rabbit that new microphone for his melodica, so why don't we switch you and Spine around, and put Rabbit closer to Sam so we can have the piano easier for the two of you to get to?"  
  
"That won't work."    
  
"Why not?"  
  
"Because Rabbit needs to be stage left."  Both were caught by surprise as The Spine spoke up from the doorway.  "That won't change.  Jon and I can move around though, that's fine."  
  
"Why can't Rabbit move somewhere else?"  
  
"He can't hear out of his left ear."  
  
"Why don't I just fix that?"    
  
Spine and Jon exchanged looks, not even needing to have a private Wi-Fi conversation to know how that was going to end.  
  
"Because Pappy didn't fix it."  Jon's voice was small.    
  
"Rabbit really needs to get over that.  I can fix it, and he'll be good as new."  
  
"I actually agree with Rabbit on this one."  Michael gave Spine an incredulous look. "Rabbit's had to be repaired hundreds of times.  You don't think we could have had it fixed then?  No.  R-Rabbit has a reason for that not being repaired.  And I agree with him."  
  
The Jon nodded in agreement.  Though, for a more selfish reason.  He liked being able to help Rabbit power down.  It made him feel useful, loved, needed.  He was just the silly little brother after all.  Being able to help Rabbit was his way of feeling special.  Jon, really, was no better than Rabbit when it came to showing affection.    
  
Michael let the matter drop.  He never asked to switch robot positions after that.    
  
\---------------------------  
  
It had taken almost a year to put Rabbit back together.  By some miracle he had caught that rocket, saving the convoy and his brothers from being blown to smithereens.  But it hadn't done _him_ any favors.  His right arm was gone, as were both his legs, and a large portion of his forehead and upper half of his face.  His arm, actually, had been forced through his chest, puncturing his water chamber and causing it to empty out into the sands of the Middle East.  It had been Rabbit's hand that had caused damage to Spine's faceplate.    
  
They were lucky to come home at all.    
  
Almost a year.  Spine and Jon and HatchWorth had spent a great deal of their time in the workshop with the humans, piecing their oldest brother back together.  There were no rehearsals, no creating new songs, no performances.  They had salvaged old limbs from previous attempts to repair Rabbit after the World Wars.  They took this time to update Rabbit as much as they could.  New gears that weren't ground down.  Fresh cables that weren't stretched.  Fresh wires that weren't frayed or burned.  They remolded his skull to fill in where the explosion had destroyed it.  Patched his boiler and refilled it.  Last of all, they created new optics.  
  
Rabbit had started out his life like his brothers.  In black and white.  Color technology hadn't even been a thought, and already Peter was making great strides in having fully sentient robots.  He hadn't figured out color vision for them though.    
  
When the film industry started to experiment with color, the robots were the first to see as such.  Muted, washed out, but it was color.  When Rabbit lost his eyes in a war, they had been replaced with his first pair.  He was back to black and white.  He had never had them changed when his brothers were upgraded to the new "High Definition" optics that allowed them to see in full colors like real humans.   After all, those came after Pappy had died.  And the fear of going two days without being able to see what too much for him to deal with.    
  
Now, he needed whole new optics.  Steve seemed rather thrilled at the idea of having Rabbit wake up after a year of repairs and having perfect eyesight.  And hearing.  Sam was the one that asked if they could repair his ears.  Spine and Jon, once more, stepped in and ended that quickly.    
  
"It's bad enough he'll have to wake up to missing a year.  He shouldn't have to deal with people messing with his internals."  
  
"They are his ears.  We can say they were damaged in the explosion too and He'll never have to know."  
  
"We'll know."  
  
They let the matter drop.  
  
But they did piece Rabbit together finally.  Peters the fifth and sixth built the optics, and rebuilt the optic portion of Rabbit's mechanical brain.  They modified it to accept the advanced cameras.  Everything was hooked up and ready, the new faceplates and shutters and skull hatch in place.  Steve turned Rabbit on.  
  
His fingers twitched, the shutters of the new optics flicked but did not open.  There was an acrid stench before smoke started to stream from the seam of the new copper on his head, and then a bang like that of a gunshot deafened the humans of the room.  Everyone ducked; Jon covered Peter, Peter, and Michael.  Spine took care of Steve and Sam.  HatchWorth was the only one not to dive for cover.  
  
"I don't think it worked."  HatchWorth's halting words brought everyone back to the table moments later.  Rabbit was powered off on his own once more, a large hole in the metal above his left eye told the story.  The new brain circuitry was not accepted.    
  
\------------------  
  
"I don't **_get it_**!"  It had been two weeks.  Peter the sixth was bent over blue prints and schematics of all the robots of Walter Manor.  Michael was pouring over Peter the first's notes.  Steve was picking apart the remains of the burnt rejected sight circuits.    
  
"I followed Great Grand Pappy's design; I put in upgrades that should have been compatible.  There's no reason for it to have been shot!"  
  
"There might be." The room turned to Michael as he stopped pacing, picking up a diagram of Rabbit's internals and pointing out a line in the journal.  
  
"' _The human brain has the miraculous advantage of shifting the work load should there be damage.  If something is forgotten, or lost, the rest of the brain rewires itself to take the load.  Perhaps there is a way to implement this in the automatons to allow them to self-repair should damage befall them._ '  So what Colonel Walter is saying is if something breaks, another circuit board takes over that program."  
  
"Okay?  But nothing's taking over Rabbit's eyes."   
  
"That damage is too big.  But take a look at this.  See how Rabbit was laid out in 1896?"  The group shifted to the metal table where Rabbit was still open and being worked on.  "This doesn't look anything like what he has going on in his head right now."  
  
"So someone's shifted everything over time."  
  
"Of course they have."  Spine spoke up.  He hadn't left Rabbit's side since they tried to power him on.  "We've all been damaged and repaired over the years.  Upgraded.  My own brain isn't like Colonel Walter's diagram."  
  
"But yours is documented.  You have a file that has every change ever made to you."  
  
"Of course."  
  
"Well."  Michael pulled Rabbit's file from the table and dug through it looking for other diagrams.  "No one's documented any of Rabbit's brain changes."  
  
Spine rose from his chair and sorted through the papers himself, confusion becoming apparent as his spines began to spew steam.  
  
"This isn't right.  Three was adamant that Two and Four kept perfect records of every change they made."  
  
"I’m sure Grandpa Four and Great Grandpas Two and Three tried, The Spine.  But if they were made they aren't here."  
  
"That would be because they didn't make modifications.  Rabbit did."  The room went quiet as Peter the fifth spoke over his son.  "Rabbit explained to me that he had to make emergency repairs during the wars.  Both to himself, and to the two of you, Spine.  He says you've done the same for him.  When you fixed his legs in World War Two, did you write it all down?"  
  
"I-... No, sir, I did not."  
  
"And did you tell Father and Grandfathers?"  
  
"No, sir, I did not."    
  
"So what makes you think that Rabbit ever documented anything?"  
  
"You mean whatever we build might not be connecting right to what is really going on in Rabbit's head."  
  
"Correct.  It'd be like connecting the In to the Out, or a resistor of the wrong volts."  
  
"So we're flying blind then."  
  
"It would appear so Sam, it would appear so."  
  
\--------------------------  
  
They wound up sealing off broken circuits and carefully powering Rabbit on without optics.    
  
He panicked, which was to be expected.  He didn't know where he was, what had happened, why he couldn't see...  The Spine, The Jon, and HatchWorth had to hold him down until he managed to gain control of himself once more.  
  
"Rabbit, do you know where you are?"  Michael kept his voice low, soft.  He sat just out of Rabbit's arm's reach.  
  
"Nnnnnnnn-n-n-n-n-no."  
  
"You're at home.  It's Michael, do you recognize my voice?"  Rabbit gave a tiny nod.  "Good.  That's very good Rabbit.  Do you remember what happened to you?"  
  
"No."    
  
"What is the last thing you remember?"  
  
"We were f-f-f-f-fflying."  
  
"Okay.  That gives us a place to start.  Rabbit do you remember where you were flying too?"  
  
"No."  
  
"You and Spine and Jon were flying to the troops in the Middle East.  You were going to entertain our soldiers.  Do you remember that Rabbit?"  
  
"No, but I'll take ya word for it."  
  
"Good good.  The Spine told me you were attacked.  That you saved everyone's lives.  You don't remember that?"  
  
"No."  
  
"You were very badly damaged Rabbit.  You've been powered down for about a year now."  
  
"A YEAR?!"  
  
"Rabbit Rabbit it's okay!  It's okay!  Just listen to me Rabbit, okay?  Can you hear me?"  
  
Rabbit nodded, still shivering on the table that he sat on.  Spine let go of his arms.    
  
"I'm sorry it has taken us so long Rabbit.  We wanted to make sure we did it right.  But we ran into a problem."  
  
"What kinda problem?"  
  
"Your optics were broken."  
  
"Dat's easy."  
  
"No, Rabbit.  Listen to me.  Your optics were broken.  And when they were broken, part of your brain was destroyed.  The visual portion."  
  
Rabbit was silent.    
  
"We've tried to rebuild it based off Peter the fi- Pappy’s design.  But it didn't work.  Rabbit your circuits fried what we rebuilt.  For some reason what we made isn't compatible with what you already have."  
  
No one moved.  The only sound in the room was the soft ticking of Rabbit's clockwork.  After a moment, he sighed out a bit of steam and wrapped his arms around himself.    
  
"So, wuts dat mean?"  
  
"Peter was thinking of building you a whole new brain.  Fresh circuits, whole new layout and design.  It would mean no more forgetting set lists, being able to see again, thinking quicker than ever before."  
  
"Okay."  
  
"The problem is, once we build this, we have to transfer all the information you have stored in your head to the new circuits.  We're worried that the old circuits will reject the transfer."  
  
"Meanin' you'd lose me."  
  
"Essentially, yes.  If something were to happen, it'd be like you woke up for the first time in 1896.  You'd be you, but your personality might be a little different, and you wouldn't remember anything.  You have your same core, the same S.O.U.L., but none of your changes over the last hundred years.  That's only a possibility though!  It _might_ happen, but it might not."  
  
"So why'd ya power me on to tell me dis?"  
  
"It's a big decision Rabbit.  And it's happening _to you_. We thought you'd appreciate being able to have some say in it."  It took a few moments, but Rabbit nodded.  He understood.    
  
"Can I... Can I talk to SSSSSSSSSSSSSSpine for a moment?"  
  
The humans and the two youngest robots left the room to allow the brothers to talk.    
  
\---------------------------  
  
"I can run wifout all th'circuits, right?"  
  
"Yes."  Spine had called everyone back into the workshop about half an hour later.  Michael was back in his chair answering Rabbit's questions once more.  Rabbit was gripping the side of the metal table under him so hard there were dents.    
  
"Ya can... ya can guarantee that I'll run wifout dem?"  
  
"Yes."  
  
"But, but not that I'll tranfa to da new brain?"  
  
"Right.  I can't say for certain that it'll work."  
  
"Don't do it."  
  
"I'm sorry?"  
  
"Don't make a new brain.  Don't tranfa me ova.  It's not... It's not worth it."    
  
Everyone let that sink in for a moment.  Michael looked to Peter, who looked to his father, who looked to Steve, who looked to Sam, who looked to Spine.  Who nodded.  The discussion he had with Rabbit would not leave that room.  It wasn't anyone else's business what his older brother's fears were.    
  
"Okay.  Then let's get you cleaned up and dressed and let Jon know that you're okay."


End file.
